Loving the Mission Fields of the World

Loving the Mission Fields of the World

Loving Our World

By Steve Viars

Bible Text:Acts 15

Preached On: Sunday, January 24, 2016

Faith Church

5526 State Road 26 E

Lafayette, IN 47905

Website:

Online Sermons:

As you know, our church's mission statement is to glorify God. We were just singing about that, weren't we? Yeah, what a great song that is. It's our mission to glorify God by winning people to Jesus Christ and then equipping them to be more faithful disciples. That means that there are all sorts of things that we just don’t do, activities that we don’t involve ourselves in because they're not consistent with our mission. They may not be inherently bad, that’s not the point. They're just not tethered tightly enough to what we believe God has called us to do here according to his word.

On the other hand, there are all sorts of other activities that we pursue passionately because we see those things as at the very heart of our mission, so we try to be mission-driven around here. We try to be mission-focused. We talk a lot about that, and I think that we should. Along with our mission, our church family has adopted 5 core values, the fifth one being strengthening others. We believe that God is pleased as we seek to strengthen other pastors and other missionaries and other key leaders, and I'm glad. I'm really glad our church family believes that. That mentality preceded me, for sure. I'm glad that it did.

What that means is we understand that our first priority is to provide spiritual oversight and care for those that the Lord has brought into this church, but we believe that God's mission is much longer than us, much larger than us. We also believe that God has blessed us, hasn’t he, with an unusual amount of resources, people and gifts and experiences and teaching and opportunities and finances. As much of that as we can share with others, the more our God will be glorified here and around the world. Is that right? Our first priority is to meet the needs of every person who is part of this church, but because we have so much, the more of that we can share with others, the better. Are we all on board with that thus far? Can I get a little "Mm-hmm, absolutely" for that? Okay, good. Good.

For example, Pastor Green and I have been in Orlando the last couple of days because of this core value. A church there that’s part of the Harvest Bible Chapel network down there organized a conference in Biblical counseling and discipleship for the people in that part of the country, and they asked the staff from Faith to provide the training for them. That’s in the sweet spot of our ministry. I have a quick trip to Jacksonville scheduled this week. I can't help it that it's all Florida and Caribbean countries, but that’s just the way it worked out. I have to run down there to participate in the Pastors Conference at First Baptist in Jacksonville. We've always done those kinds of things as a church because it's at the very heart of what we believe the Lord has called us to do.

That’s why a couple of weeks ago, Dan Wickert, who's on the far left of this picture … If you don’t know him, he's a physician from our church. He's also volunteered in our counseling center for many years now. … along with Newton Pena. Newton is the fourth person from the left in that picture, who is one of our third-year seminary students who along with his wife, Yadir, and their son, Josue, are from the Dominican Republic.

We traveled down to the DR for our fourth training conference there just a couple of weeks ago. It was really a privilege to serve with Dan and Newton, and I'm happy to tell you that their ministry was just so well-received by the over 700 persons from around the country of Dominican Republic who came to that conference. Other than what looked like a few Mr. Grumpy Pants moments … I've never had that look on my face. It had to be Photoshopped in. Other than that, we had a great time. We had a great time ministering the word of God.

We did, by the way, when we got to the DR had a rather stark introduction to the culture the first morning. Dr. Wickert had never been to the DR before. On that first day, we met up with a gentleman on your left. That is Yadir Pena's brother-in-law, Moses, who is a surgeon. Then the young man on the right was a medical school student from New York City who just happened to be down in the DR for a 2-month surgery internship in a hospital there. He had just worked the night before. Of course, we got into a conversation about what it was like to be a general surgeon in the DR, et cetera. He said, "Well, it's pretty lively, pretty lively because people fight with machetes there," he said. He said, "It kept it pretty busy."

He starts telling us about a case he had had the night before, and he kept using the feminine pronoun to describe the case, "she," "she," she." Finally, we asked, "Are you talking about the 2 females who were in a fight with machetes?" He said something like, "Oh, yeah, even the ladies take their fighting here very seriously." Welcome to another country. Anytime, we had a great time serving there, for sure.

Then Dan traveled back to the U.S., and then Newton and Pastor Oscar Arocha, who is the senior pastor of the host church there in the DR, and I left Sunday afternoon after church to travel to Cuba. This was the scene outside our so-called hotel room when we woke up Monday morning. It's not like I had to find a bad picture. I could have walked anywhere around the hotel where I woke up that morning and that’s exactly what I saw. That’s Havana. To say that communism has destroyed Cuba would be an understatement. I've been to a number of poor places in the world, but what struck me about this country was how poverty is so widespread. Then when you couple this with the fact that the government owns where you live, the government for the most part tells you where you're going to work, to say that it is a hopeless place in many ways is just an understatement, for sure.

However, in the providence of God, there are a number of churches there. In fact, hundreds of churches were there. The man on your left, as I mentioned, is Pastor Arocha, and just to keep this story straight, that’s Newton's pastor from the Dominican Republic. The man on your right figures prominently into the story. His name is Leslie. His grandfather and his grandmother were used of the Lord to proclaim the gospel in Cuba and to establish a seminary that’s about 5 hours away from where this picture was taken. Leslie's grandparents suffered greatly under communism. Their seminary property was confiscated twice by the government. Leslie's grandfather was imprisoned because of his faith, but by God's grace, they're involved now in that seminary.

It's interesting. Leslie's father is also a pastor, Leslie's father, who had to be out of the country when we were there. Leslie pastored that church that’s signified by the orange sign, the brightest sign on that road, for sure, just kind of a ray of hope on that road, for sure. While they wouldn’t say that there was complete religious freedom there, what we learned is you can have a church as long as … They said it this way, "as long as you're careful about it." As long as you're careful about it. By God's grace, they now, Leslie's father and Leslie, the man on the right, are involved in the same seminary that the grandmother and the grandfather kept alive under communism, and Pastor Arocha from the Dominican Republic has been going and just trying to help them.

Now, Lord willing, Leslie, the man, again, on the right, and his father and their wives have accepted an invitation to be with us at our Biblical Counseling Training Conference in just a couple of weeks. If everything works out, Leslie's father will actually be one of the speakers in our worship services 2 weeks from today on February 7 along with Luis Mendez, who is from the Dominican Republic and now serves on the staff at Bethlehem Baptist up in Minneapolis, and Kike Torres, one of my friends from Mexico.

Then we that morning left and traveled the 5 hours to the seminary property, and we taught a group of 70 pastors who came in from around the country. It was a marvelous experience, a marvelous experience, for sure. To try to put some of the lessons in context, I want to invite you to open your Bible now to Acts Chapter 15, Acts Chapter 15. That’s on page 105, the back section of the Bible under the chair in front of you. Acts Chapter 15 or page 105 of the back section of the Bible under the chair in front of you. You know that our church's theme this year is loving our world. Don’t you love that theme? Loving our world. This morning, we're going to be focusing on loving the mission fields of the world.

Whenever I have the privilege to represent us on a trip like that, I'm trying to accomplish 3 goals. One is just to honor the Lord by faithfully teaching the word. This is a picture of the 70-plus pastors who came for this training. These are men and women in Cuba who have been cut off from the kind of resources that you and I take for granted. It's been a closed country since 1959. The average salary of the pastors in that picture … You want to guess how much? $20.00. That’s what they earn, $20.00 a month. It's very difficult to have books, as you can imagine. For one thing, there's not many books available, and for those that are in Spanish, it would be practically impossible for the people that you see in that picture to be able to afford a book.

A computer is a luxury that few could afford. None of the people in that picture came to the conference by car, because none of them own a car. The government's cut them off from the outside world. They just recently received limited access to the Internet, if you want to call it … That’s a whole 'nother story in and of itself. Even for the limited access, it's just so terribly expensive that most people could not afford it. You can just imagine the hunger that they would have for sound teaching from the word of God.

In fact, they told us, "We almost became a cult." They're actually a group of 400 churches that we were working with, and they said, "We almost became a cult because all we had was our Bible, but we didn’t have any resources to know how to interpret the Bible," so there are all these fanciful interpretations going around. My point is, they're just longing for sound teaching from the word. Just say, "Well, why did we go there?" That’s one of the reasons is just to try to provide on your behalf teaching from the word of God.

The second goal that we would always have when we go to a place like that is to try to identify leaders. We're asking the question, "Well, who could we effectively work with in the future?" For example, who might we be able to bring to our Biblical Counseling Training Conference in February and to try to provide training that they could take back into their own culture, or who could we invite to participate in our master of arts in Biblical counseling degree online for anyone that might have access to a computer and the Internet?

Even to ask the question, "Is there anyone in that country who along with his wife would like to come to Lafayette for 3 years to be part of our master of divinity program, to actually join our staff as one of our interns, so you could light the fire under them just like you have for so many others who have been part of that program?" We're looking for leaders. Who can we effectively partner with in the coming days?

Here's one example. The woman with the dark complexion in this picture, she's named Tina. She's worked at this particular seminary where we taught for 30 years, starting as the seminary's cook. She's been a great steward over the years and she worked her way up to being the seminary's Hebrew professor. That’s what she does now. She is their Hebrew professor. Imagine doing that with very few books. Again, you're frozen in time. You don't have access to the kind of resources that you and I take for granted every day. Imagine learning Hebrew and then teaching Hebrew and Old Testament with very few resources.

When I spoke with her about the possibility of having her own computer with high-powered Bible study software in Spanish that would allow her to study the scripture in the original languages, along with hundreds of Bible study reference books and other resource tools right there on her computer, I wish right then I had taken a picture of the look on her face. She looked at me like I had just come from Mars. To say that that would be a dream come true doesn’t even begin to explain the kind of blessing that that could be to this dear sister in Christ named Tina.

The third goal is, again, on our behalf, looking for needs that we might be able to meet. The Cuban Christians are very unassuming. They did not ask us for anything, did not ask us for anything other than friendship and partnership. That’s what they asked from us, but I say you can't be in these kind of conditions for long before you start to quietly ask questions. One man softly told me this. He said, "You know, it's hard to tell your children that we just don’t have any food today." He said, "If you really want to know what it's like to live here, that’s hard." Several remarked in private conversations, they said … I don’t know exactly how to say it, just say it. They said, "You know, it would be really nice if my family had underclothes. That would be nice. If we had shoes, glasses that actually had the correct prescription." Just the kind of things that you and I take … How many pair of shoes did you have to pick from this morning?

Now we can't legally or economically gather up a lot of things and just ship them there. It doesn’t work that way, okay? The Castros are still alive. It doesn’t work that way. I'm going to try to rein in my snark about them, but, well, anyway. We do have 4 persons coming from Cuba here in just a few weeks who can legally take back 2 large suitcases each and a briefcase each, along with their own carry-on. We're going to have an opportunity to bless them, and I'll talk to you about that a little bit more in a few minutes.

Now the Book of Acts, Acts Chapter 15. This is all about missions. This is all about what Jesus loving the world actually looks like. It's one thing to say, "Well, we love the world." It's something else, practically, what does that look like? The Book of Acts tells us what Jesus loving the world looks like. Whenever we think about mission, we shouldn’t be too far away mentally from the great commission that Jesus gave his disciples encapsulated in passages like this, "Go there and make disciples of all the nations," Matthew 28:19-20, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe."

There's the key thing. Not just teaching them facts, teaching them to "observe all that I commanded you and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age," or Acts Chapter 1, Verses 7 and 8, he spoke to them. This is after the resurrection, "It's not for you to know the times or the epochs which the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you." By the way, that’s already happened, right? What's going to happen then? "You shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth."

Here's what that means, friends. It would be impossible for a follower of Jesus Christ to truly love the world without caring deeply about the concepts contained in passages like those. How many times would I have to say that before we were absolutely sure that every last one of us got that down deeply in our hearts, because if we're going to talk this year about loving our world, then I honestly believe it would be impossible for a follower of Jesus Christ to truly love the world without caring deeply about the concepts that are contained in passages just like those.

Now the Book of Acts explains how this commission was initially carried out by followers of Christ. By the time we get to Acts 15, of course, the church has been born. That happened in Acts Chapter 2, and significant growth has occurred, amazing growth, and opposition has begun. The apostle Peter has been used to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles, to the non-Jews. That’s a very important point contextually. The great persecutor of the church by now, Saul of Tarsus, has been won to Christ and is now who? He's now the apostle Paul, who's gone with his coworker, Barnabas, on the first missionary journey.